The man who sold space

Ever since he was a child, he’d wanted to sell space. But as an adult, he realized there was an infinity of it, in fact several infinities, and such abundance was bad for business.

So he and three friends came to Earth and began promoting the absurd idea that space was at a premium. They said it was hard to get, and going fast.

Earth was a good place for his business, because most people had no idea they had, in addition to physical space, their own. Meaning, the space they invented, the space of interior visions, which could be made into reality.

Interior territory, in fact, was one of those infinities.

But if you asked people about this, they usually said: “Huh?”

Smith and his pals prospered. They won contracts from governments. Politicians were dedicated, in every possible way, to shrinking the concept of space. For others.

After a few thousand years, Smith and Co. had engineered human consciousness to regard space as an illusion.

Smith would tell a client, “Look, there isn’t any. But I know a guy. He lives on top of a mountain. He’s got a line on a small piece of black market space. It’s very, very expensive, but if you’re serious, I might be able to lay my hands on it for you. His stuff is pure. It isn’t the delusional crap, it’s the genuine article. One square inch of it runs about six million, delivered.”

Turned out the man on the mountain was the high priest of a church. His own church. He held secret services. His religion was ultra-exclusive. Invitation only.

Eventually, Smith took to selling atoms.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m offering you the only thing that’s available. A square inch? No one can afford that anymore. Maybe an atom. Possibly a neutron or a quark. Most likely a quark.”

He was the man behind the curtain. Governments consulted him frequently. When he spoke, they listened and obeyed.

One night, Smith was having supper at a little joint in Lower Manhattan. He could move about anonymously.

It was late and the restaurant was empty.

A man walked in and went over to Smith and sat down.

He said, “Aren’t you the lunatic who conned everybody into developing amnesia about space? Yeah, it’s you. Well, I’m putting it back on the market. Cheap. A whole lot of it. As much as people want.”

Smith smiled. “Oh, you must be one of those of crazy artists,” he said. “I thought we wiped all of you out, or put you away in institutions.”

“We’re slippery,” the man said. And he reached out his hand and gestured in the air, and the little restaurant fell away like an old dream and there appeared a huge black sky full of stars…

“You see?” he said. “It’s easy.”

Smith screamed like he’d been hit with a bolt of lightning. He fell on the floor and writhed and wriggled.

“Infinity,” the man said. “Maybe you can sentence fifty people to live together in one room, but you can’t outlaw infinity. It pops back up.”

Smith tried to think about something else. But he couldn’t. He saw rooms and corridors and lobbies and streets and roads and fields and mountains and valleys, and each one of those separate spaces revealed itself as endless.

He saw symbols, which had been put in place to plant “shrinking ideas” in people’s minds, and now the symbols shattered like crockery and blew out into the universe and universes beyond.

He fought to maintain his position, but it was no use. Now, the worst thing happened. He felt his own endless space and knew he was infinite—and that this was true for every soul.

The con of cons was done. Over.

Paintings miles wide appeared before him, and these paintings were worlds. The Centrality of coagulated illusion was going away.

A fresh wind was blowing.

Earth was still there, but it was a stage, a platform, on which billions of souls were rising out of deep narcosis.

“Eternity!” Smith shouted. “There goes my career!”

Coda: In 1591, Giordano Bruno wrote: “…and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.”

On February 17, 1600, in the Campo de Fiori, in Rome, the Church burned Bruno at the stake.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Post navigation

3 comments on “The man who sold space”

See, I knew deep down somewhere that I was not the crazy one. It is all of the constraints and generalizations of society that creates the perception of crazy. They need to all just open their minds a bot wider. Thanks. I enjoyed the post.